I've written many times about the California High Speed Rail plan to build a bullet train connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles. That plan has been a self-made disaster from the start. It has made some slow progress over the years but the budget is now many times what it was when it was announced and there is no plan for how to pay for it. California is now facing a budget deficit instead of a surplus so the state's ability to fund it seems more in doubt than ever.

Despite all of this, another plan to construct a bullet train in California kicked off last week and this one seems like it's off to a much better start. The plan is to build a train that will run at nearly 200mph between a city east of Los Angeles and Las Vegas, Nevada. Groundbreaking happened last week and the plan calls for completion of the project by 2028, in time for the summer Olympics in LA.

Brightline, a private company that operates an intercity rail line connecting Miami and Orlando, Fla., hopes to be the first to run a private high-speed service in the U.S.

Its new proposed railway has rapidly gone from blueprints to construction, unlike California’s high-speed line between Los Angeles and the Bay Area, whose progress has been slowed to a crawl by political disputes, cost overruns and permitting delays...

The rail line will run within the highway median and support speeds of up to 200 mph. Upon completion, it will include 322 miles of overhead electrical lines to power the trains.

The train won't go all the way to Los Angeles but it will connect up with other trains that already run from downtown LA to Rancho Cucamonga. 

About four miles north of Ontario International Airport, the Rancho Cucamonga station will sit on a five-acre property at the northwest corner of Milliken Avenue and Azusa Court in San Bernardo County. This station will be co-located with California Metrolink trains to and from downtown Los Angeles and other locations in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties.

The difference between this project and the SF to LA project is that Brightline already has all of its land and has gotten past all of the environmental hurdles.

The idea of a bullet train to Los Angeles dates back decades under various names including DesertXpress. Brightline West acquired the project in 2019, and company and public officials say it has all required right-of-way and environmental approvals, along with labor agreements...

Brightline West says electric-powered trains will cut the four-hour trip across the Mojave Desert to a little more than two hours. It projects 11 million one-way passengers per year, with fares that Edens said will be comparable to airline ticket costs. The trains will offer rest rooms, Wi-Fi, food and beverage sales and the option to check luggage.

Flights from LA to Vegas can be fairly cheap, around $100 round trip. The train will be a little slower than a plane, though boarding should be much less of a hassle than at an airport. The main thing is this will be much faster than a car which normally takes about 4 1/2 hours unless the traffic is bad. And as someone who has made this drive a few times, I can tell you the traffic is often bad. On Friday afternoon heading out to Vegas and Sunday afternoons heading back to California the traffic frequently comes to a halt. At those times, which are crowded because that's when most people are making the drive, it can easily add an hour onto the trip. Also, with the price of gas in LA now above $5 a gallon, the cost of the 500 mile round trip is probably going to be close to the cost of one ticket. All of that to say, there should be a market for this service if they can keep the prices reasonable.

Will they actually get this done by 2028? That's the real question. It should be doable. Other countries can do a project of this size in that amount of time. If so, they will have this running two years before even the least interesting portion of the SF to LA route (along the central valley) is completed.